Open Internet

Valarie Kaur is a Non-Residential Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She is a lawyer, documentary filmmaker, and interfaith organizer who helps communities tell their stories and organize for social change. She has made award-winning films and led multimedia campaigns on civil rights issues: hate crimes, racial profiling, gun violence, marriage equality, immigration detention, and solitary confinement.

Paddy Leerssen was the Open Internet Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society in 2017-2018. AT CIS, he worked on digital media and communications law in general, and net neutrality policy in particular. He is now a PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, where his dissertation focuses on the impacts of algorithmic content recommendations on the governance of media pluralism. Paddy holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar, an LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam, and an LL.B. from Maastricht University.

Brendan Sasso is the Open Internet Fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. In his previous career as a journalist, he covered the Federal Communications Commission as it wrote landmark net neutrality regulations in 2015. He also wrote about issues including consumer privacy, government surveillance, cybersecurity, and intellectual property. He worked for The Hill and National Journal, and his work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Quartz, and DefenseOne. He has appeared on C-SPAN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR to discuss current technology policy issues.

Today the FCC Commissioners voted 3-2 to eliminate longstanding net neutrality protections, reclassify internet service providers as ‘information services’ under Title I of the Communications Act, and ban states from enacting their own net neutrality protections.

On Wednesday November 22, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai published his draft order outlining his plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet. His proposal would leave both the FCC and the states powerless to protect consumers and businesses against net neutrality violations by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon that connect us to the Internet.

Earlier this week Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai announced a radical plan to undo the net neutrality protections that have been in place in the U.S. since the beginning of the Internet.

The post below is an open letter to European citizens, lawmakers and regulators, from our founder and Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Professor Barbara van Schewick, and Professor Larry Lessig. Join the conversation in the comments below or on Twitter using #savetheinternet or #netneutrality.

In a concession to regulators, Google is . . . using “geo-blocking” technology to control what European users can see. Under the new system, Google will not only remove links on, say, google.fr, but it will block users in France from seeing those links on any other Google country site, or google.com itself. Unless they use tools like virtual private networks to disguise their locations, users in those countries will see pruned search results.

Today, after more than a year of national debate, the Open Internet Order goes into effect. The Order keeps the Internet an open and democratic space free from undue corporate control. Business leaders, start-up innovators, and economists widely praise the Order as win for the economic growth.

But protecting the open Internet is not just sound policy -- it's a moral imperative.

Today, the Open Internet Order goes into effect. Many business owners, entrepreneurs, and economists are praising the order as a win for the economy. But there’s an unexpected voice in the chorus of praise: America’s faith leaders.

As a Christian and Sikh, we are celebrating the Open Internet Order, because the communities we serve cannot flourish today without an open and free Internet. The order codifies principles that have governed the Internet in the U.S. for decades. It keeps the Internet an open space for free speech, including religious expression.

Today, the Open Internet Order becomes effective. Adopted after a year of national debate, the order codifies “net neutrality” — the principle that keeps the Internet an open and democratic space. Specifically, it bans carriers like Comcast and Verizon from blocking and slowing down websites at will, or charging sites extra fees to reach people faster.

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"Even if Fort Collins’s network succeeds, it’s not likely to send Comcast scrambling to revamp the way it treats customers or content. The future of the free and open internet will remain in question for the vast majority of the country’s online users. But ISPs have been shamed into user-friendly practices before—Google Fiber’s splashy rollout a few years ago had the knock-on effect of scaring giants like AT&T into building more gigabit fiber networks in major markets.

"Barbara van Schewick, a Stanford law professor, said she expects the FCC’s order to be overturned in the courts.

“Today’s vote is a stain on the FCC,” van Schewick said in a statement. “For decades, the FCC prided itself on being careful, deliberate and transparent in its mission to keep the Internet open for free speech, commerce and innovation, while maintaining incentives for broadband providers to invest. This FCC has failed to live up to that standard.”"

"Net neutrality advocates have also expressed concern that ISPs could block certain sites outright. Barbara van Schewick, a net neutrality expert at Stanford University, writes that“Verizon told a federal court in 2013 that it should have the right to charge any website any fee Verizon liked — and if, for instance, the Wall Street Journal didn’t pay up, Verizon should be allowed to block its site.”"

"Many observers expect the FCC to vote along party lines in favor of the repeal. But Stanford Law School's Barbara van Schewick, a net neutrality proponent, suggested Sunday that Congress could pressure the agency to retreat.

"Open internet advocates argue that net neutrality is especially important for marginalized populations that feel threatened by the Trump administration. "Communities of color across the United States depend on an open internet to thrive," Malkia Cyril, executive director at the Center for Media Justice, said in an email to Motherboard. "From resisting police violence to demanding fair wages—the political voice and economic opportunity that the internet enables must remain protected by Title II net neutrality."

"However, the FCC rules did establish that there is "a set of consumer expectations that were being met," said Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington. "Now we go back to a place where (ISPs) really have to do something egregious to get caught," not to mention concerns about what agency has the authority, he said.

“It’s fair to say that the people who are happy about today's vote are Comcast, Verizon, Charter and AT&T and not consumers," Calo said."

"Net neutrality fans are encouraged to add their own personal thoughts to the statement and to “speak from the heart.” The campaign claims that “fast lanes for the highest bidder,” would mean everyone else will end up in a “slow lane,” and also urges BEREC to close loopholes such as “zero-rating or class-based traffic management.”

"Berners-Lee wrote in an open letter to European regulators. The letter was also signed by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig and Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, both prominent tech policy experts and longtime net neutrality crusaders.

"Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, has made an impassioned argument in favor of net neutrality in Europe, calling on European citizens to stop legislation that could see the creation of so-called internet "fast lanes."

Welcome to Startup Policy Lab’s The Policy Series, hosted by Runway! For our first October session, we go one-on-one with Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties at Stanford Center for Internet and Society (CIS).

A Brave New Era? Or, Back to the Future? Are we in 1934? 1993? Or, 2015? The FCC’s order on the open internet – What did the FCC really do and what will it mean for internet service providers, online music and video companies, e-commerce companies, transit providers and consumers?

When the FCC announced recently that it would adopt new regulations for the Internet – regulations commonly known as Net Neutrality – the announcement was widely cheered by champions of free speech and denigrated by those who feared this was government overreach. One columnist went so far as to say that Net Neutrality would let the government monitor religious leaders and their communications.

Prof. Barbara van Schewick participated in the FCC's Open Internet Roundtable on September 16, 2014.

The internet roundtable series provides an opportunity for the Commission staff and interested parties to further examine the actions the Commission should take for its goal of determining the best approach to protecting and promoting Internet openness. This roundtable focused on Policy Approaches to Ensure an Open Internet, specifically, Tailoring Policy to Harms.